Linux Home Theatre PC notes

We have had a HTPC as our main source of TV content since about 2006.
We started with MediaPortal but I couldn’t get that stable so we
switched to Vista Media Center which does actually work quite well but
I’ve always wanted to try to put Linux on our HTPC. Below are my notes.

Cable worked but seems faulty. To get the system to boot with Dell 24”
monitor, remove the GRAPHICS line in 2nd grub menu. Myth 0.24.1,
XBMC-PVR and tvheadend are all installed. MythTV, for whatever reason,
feels buggy, slow performance. XBMC-PVR plus tvheadend looks like it
might work really well; but unfortunately time-shifting isn’t working
yet. There’s a feature request
here; and also check
the XBMC-PVR devs on
timeshifting
(not sure if it will be implemented in XBMC or backend). Let’s keep
checking and come back to this solution when timeshifting is working.
XMBR-PVR plus MythBackend might also be an option, but I can’t get that
to work yet, and would have much slower channel changes than tvheadend.

Getting X to start after upgrading to 11.04 {#getting-x-to-start-after-upgrading-to-11.04 dir=”ltr”}

Making the cable {#making-the-cable dir=”ltr”}

I built a cable as per
jwexqm, including the
simple transistor circuit to composite vsync and hsync into a single
composite sync(source
1, source
2), and a 3v battery
on pins 16 and 18 of the SCART. (I originally thought my ATI R390 could
do composite sync on its own but then I noticed a message in dmesg
saying “composite sync not supported”) I used thick 75 ohm cable and
this was a right PITA. Apparently shielded CAT5 works very well and is
far easier to solder. \
\
A more detailed cable construction guide is
available,
and a Linux program for calculating
modelines are available but I
didn’t really need either.

To make these changes persistent, edit /etc/gdm/Init/Default and put the
above 3 lines before /sbin/initctl -q emit login-session-start
DISPLAY_MANAGER=gdm

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Cinergy Card {#cinergy-card dir=”ltr”}

The driver appears to NOT work with 2.6.38 because that’s when V4L1 was
completely removed in favour of V4L2 which I’m guessing the ngene driver
does not support (there has been some discussion of this on the German
forum so there’s a chance someone will get round to fixing the driver).
Ubuntu 11.04 comes with 2.6.38 so it’s necessary to either install a
previous version of Ubuntu or downgrade the kernel.\
\
Once Kernel 2.6.37 is installed, I think all that is necessary is to
download the
ngene.tar.gzfile
(from page 4 of the
forum)
and untar, and then:

make

sudo make install

sudo depmod -a

sudo modprobe ngene

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\

Then do lspci -vvvnn to see if the module has loaded

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Installing a new kernel {#installing-a-new-kernel dir=”ltr”}

Install Kernel 2.6.37 (download from Kernel.org and then followthese
instructions, make
sure lirc_mceusb AKA ir_mceusb and lirc_dev are enabled as modules).
Make sure you read the section titled “Using Ubuntu Kernel Config”
first. I didn’t do this so it’s not essential but probably is a good
idea.\
\
Use the program startupmanager to configure grub.\
\
There is a
ppa:kernel-ppa/ppa
but I think that only provides the latest kernels for your distribution
rather than previous kernels.

DisplaySize {#displaysize dir=”ltr”}

Trying to get MythTV to understand that our TV is 16:9. As per
this, I first did the
following:

\
\

jack@jack-htpc:~$ cat /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/05-monitor.conf

Section “Monitor”

Identifier ”<default monitor>”

# For 1280x720 at 100dpi (16:9)

DisplaySize 325 182 # in millimeters

EndSection

\

Xorg swallows this (according to the logs) but it makes no difference.
So I found that in the Appearance tab of Myth Front End, it’s possible
to ask it to use separate modes for GUI and Video and here you can set
it to 16:9.

OpenGL works with Open source drivers, doesn’t seem to work with
either 10.2 or 9.3 closed source

I don’t think component works at all with open source drivers (it
does work ok with closed-source, although it stutters on playback)

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Proprietary drivers\

Installing AMD closed-source drivers, Component out, HD576i\
\
Install the AMD/ATIdrivers 9.3 (the x1250 is a legacy product and so isn’t supported on the latest drivers) and then follow the instructions on: Unofficial ATI Ubuntu wiki(may need to uninstall first as shown here) (install with –buildpkg Ubuntu/9.04\
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May have to do a sudo apt-get -f install to sort out dependencies from old ATI driver\
\
Also have to comment out “driver “fglrx”” in /etc/X11/xorg.conf\
\
ATI open source drivers\
(the open source drivers\
\
Can’t yet get it to work. Things to try:

Investigate
“It has been confirmed that the Original driver
([2])
does work also for TerraTec Cinergy 2400i DVB-T (confirmed on
OpenSuse 11.2 64b after few minor corrections due to API changes in
kernel 2.6.31). Based on the README in the package it should support
these cards: “

I try to mitigate climate change using computer science. I am a Research Engineer at DeepMind, mostly working on energy problems. Previously, I worked on energy disaggregation as a post-doc at Imperial College London. Read more about me…